1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to methods and systems for routing accesses to online content. For example, embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for establishing inbound route control via dynamic Domain Name System (DNS).
2. Background
In the current digital information age, data networks such as the Internet increasingly have been used as means of communication between businesses and consumers. On the Internet, businesses can set up web sites to share and deliver content (e.g., information, data, and other resources) to consumers and other clients or site users. Because content sharing and delivery are mission-critical activities to many businesses, route control for effectively performing such activities on the Internet is essential to the continuity of operations of those businesses.
Currently, there are two approaches to route control for handling how clients reach a desired online content or web site: 1) change the way the IP address is advertised to the Internet using electronic Border Gateway Control (eBGP); and 2) change the IP address the Domain Name System (DNS) resolves to match a previous advertisement. There are drawbacks to both approaches. In the first approach, modifications to eBGP are disruptive to the Internet routing system, take a very long time to converge, and affect every destination on the Internet. Therefore, such a technique cannot be used to address individual performance problems specific to a portion of the Internet.
In the second approach, changing the DNS forces the client or site user to resolve an Internet Protocol (IP) address that will arrive on a predetermined provider. As known in the art, the DNS is the portion of the Internet infrastructure responsible for resolving site names (e.g., internap.com, uspto.gov, etc.) to IP addresses. Thus, the DNS is the primary means of locating content on the internet, wherein users initiate requests for transactions based on the resolved IP addresses. However, performance bottlenecks have emerged over time, limiting the usefulness and efficiency of the Internet infrastructure for sharing and delivering content critical to business continuity. These bottlenecks typically occur at distinct places along the many network routes to a destination (i.e., web site) from a source (i.e., a user), for example. However, if a business is multi-homed, i.e., the business relies on more than one Internet or network service provider (ISP or NSP) to access the Internet, more than one path or route is available to reach the business. Therefore, it is possible to determine and control which of the available inbound paths a client/user will take to the business web site when conducting a transaction to alleviate the bottlenecks, balance provider load, or minimize provider cost. For instance, consider a large content site with two providers A and B. By splitting the local IP address space (or using the multiple-provider IP address space) of the content site and advertising that address space out each provider independently, inbound requests will adhere to those advertisements. Therefore, requests bound for an IP address advertised out a provider A will transit through provider A, and requests bound for an address advertised out a provider B will transit through provider B. Likewise, a request bound for an IP address issued by provider A itself (as opposed to locally-owned address space) will arrive on provider A, and a request bound for an IP address issued by provider B itself (as opposed to locally-owned address space) will arrive on provider B.
Although external routing advertisements for a particular IP address determine how all traffic reaches a designated online content or web site, performance problems on each the inbound path to the online content or web site may prevent requests from ever reaching the site. Further, while factors such as the kind of DNS, DNS load balancing, caching, and content distribution system being used can influence the DNS process, such factors have not been incorporated into route control to address the performance problems on the inbound paths. Consequently, one of the primary shortcomings of route control today is the inability of a business to affect or influence inbound control, i.e., the way its content is accessed by outside users such as consumers and other clients.